Kelly questions positions of senior party members following meltdown

Junior Minister Alan Kelly has said the Labour Party will need to change following its disastrous showing locally and nationally in the local elections.

Junior Minister Alan Kelly has said the Labour Party will need to change following its disastrous showing locally and nationally in the local elections.

The party has just one remaining councillor left in Tipperary with the election of Newport-based Fiona Bonfield in Nenagh. It lost Cllr John Kennedy in Thurles, Cllr Virginia O’Dowd in Nenagh and Cllr Seanie Lonergan in Clonmel.

Following the count in Thurles, Deputy Kelly told the Tipperary Star: “It was a bad day in general. I am very disappointed. I think we need to learn a lot of lessons out of it.”

He believed the positions of some of the senior figures in the Labour Party now needed to be looked at, but cautioned that “now is not the time for quick decisions”.

“I think the party nationally needs to be reorganised, regenerated and there needs to be change, organisational change, personality change, strategy change. The Programme for Government needs to be looked at,” he said. “In the next week or so certainly we’ll be sitting down to discuss this, and some hard decisions are going to have to be made. I think lots of changes are needed in the party and we need to formulate how we are going to do that.”

He believed councillors who lost their seats didn’t lose them because they didn’t do the work.

“I think the party brand and the discourse about the party was the reason and that’s down to the party nationally,” he stated.

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